The present invention relates generally to a new family of antenna ground-planes of reduced size and enhanced performance based on an innovative set of geometries. These new geometries are known as multilevel and space-filling structures, which had been previously used in the design of multiband and miniature antennas. A throughout description of such multilevel or space-filling structures can be found in “Multilevel Antennas” (Patent Publication No. WO01/22528) and “Space-Filling Miniature Antennas” (Patent Publication No. WO01/54225).
The current invention relates to the use of such geometries in the ground-plane of miniature and multiband antennas. In many applications, such as for instance mobile terminals and handheld devices, it is well known that the size of the device restricts the size of the antenna and its ground-plane, which has a major effect on the overall antenna performance. In general terms, the bandwidth and efficiency of the antenna are affected by the overall size, geometry, and dimensions of the antenna and the ground-plane. A report on the influence of the ground-plane size in the bandwidth of terminal antennas can be found in the publication “Investigation on Integrated Antennas for GSM Mobile Phones”, by D. Manteuffel, A. Bahr, I. Wolff, Millennium Conference on Antennas & Propagation, ESA, AP2000, Davos, Switzerland, April 2000. In the prior art, most of the effort in the design of antennas including ground-planes (for instance microstrip, planar inverted-F or monopole antennas) has been oriented to the design of the radiating element (that is, the microstrip patch, the PIFA element, or the monopole arm for the examples described above), yet providing a ground-plane with a size and geometry that were mainly dictated by the size or aesthetics criteria according to every particular application.
One of the key issues of the present invention is considering the ground-plane of an antenna as an integral part of the antenna that mainly contributes to its radiation and impedance performance (impedance level, resonant frequency, bandwidth). A new set of geometries are disclosed here, such a set allowing to adapt the geometry and size of the ground-plane to the ones required by any application (base station antennas, handheld terminals, cars, and other motor-vehicles and so on), yet improving the performance in terms of, for instance, bandwidth, Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (hereafter VSWR), or multiband behaviour.
The use of multilevel and space-filling structures to enhance the frequency range an antenna can work within was well described in patent publication numbers WO01/22528 and WO01/54225. Such an increased range is obtained either through an enhancement of the antenna bandwidth, with an increase in the number of frequency bands, or with a combination of both effects. In the present invention, said multilevel and space-filling structures are advantageously used in the ground-plane of the antenna obtaining this way either a better return loss or VSWR, a better bandwidth, a multiband behaviour, or a combination of all these effects. The technique can be seen as well as a means of reducing the size of the ground-plane and therefore the size of the overall antenna.
A first attempt to improve the bandwidth of microstrip antennas using the ground-plane was described by T. Chiou, K. Wong, “Designs of Compact Microstrip Antennas with a Slotted Ground Plane”. IEEE-APS Symposium, Boston, 8-12 Jul., 2001. The skilled in the art will notice that even though the authors claim the improved performance is obtained by means of some slots on the antenna ground-plane, those were unintentionally using a very simple case of multilevel structure to modify the resonating properties of said ground-plane. In particular, a set of two rectangles connected through three contact points and a set of four rectangles connected through five contact points were described there. Another example of an unintentional use of a multilevel ground structure in an antenna ground-plane is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,600. There, a particular case of a ground-plane composed by three rectangles with a capacitive electromagnetic coupling between them was used. It should be stressed that neither in the paper by Chiou and Wong, nor in patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,600, the general configuration for space-filling or multilevel structures were disclosed or claimed, so the authors were not attempting to use the benefits of said multilevel or space-filling structures to improve the antenna behaviour.
Some of the geometries described in the present invention are inspired in the geometries already studied in the 19th century by several mathematicians such as Giusepe Peano and David Hilbert. In all said cases the curves were studied from the mathematical point of view but were never used for any practical engineering application. Such mathematical abstractions can be approached in a practical design by means of the general space-filling curves described in the present invention. Other geometries, such as the so called SZ, ZZ, HilbertZZ, Peanoinc, Peanodec or PeanoZZ curves described in patent publication WO01/54225 are included in the set of space-filling curves used in an innovative way in the present invention. It is interesting to notice that in some cases, such space-filling curves can be used to approach ideal fractal shapes as well.
The dimension (D) is often used to characterize highly complex geometrical curves and structures such as those described in the present invention. There exists many different mathematical definitions of dimension but in the present document the box-counting dimension (which is well-known to those skilled in mathematics theory) is used to characterize a family of designs. Again, the advantage of using such curves in the novel configuration disclosed in the present invention is mainly the overall antenna miniaturization together with and enhancement of its bandwidth, impedance, or multiband behaviour.
Although usually not as efficient as the general space-filling curves disclosed in the present invention, other well-known geometries such as meandering and zigzag curves can also be used in a novel configuration according to the spirit and scope of the present invention. Some descriptions of using zigzag or meandering curves in antennas can be found for instance in patent publication WO96/27219, but it should be noticed that in the prior-art such geometries were used mainly in the design of the radiating element rather than in the design of the ground-plane as it is the purpose and basis of several embodiments in the present invention.
It is known the European Patent EP-688.040 which discloses a bidirectional antenna including a substrate having a first and second surfaces. On a second surface are arranged respectively, a ground conductor formed by a single surface, a strip conductor and a patch conductor.